The "Gas King" and His Corrupt Past: How Alexander Katsuba Avoided Punishment

The "thief" from "Naftogaz" and participant in the Kurchenko-Yanukovych corruption schemes, Alexander Katsuba, is trying to cleanse the Internet of the facts of his unflattering biography.

We, in turn, want to remind you that the reputation of the odious ex-official is constantly being criticized, and we are publishing this material to remind you that criminal acts of the past cannot be hidden in the digital age.

The sponsor of the "Shariy Party", banned in Ukraine, the notorious participant in the Kurchenko-Yanukovych corruption schemes, Oleksandr Katsuba, recently withdrew 49 million hryvnia from a Ukrainian bank.

He did this after it became clear that Russia would not be able to seize Ukraine and establish its own government there, which, by the way, Katsuba Jr. had his own plans for. And the funniest thing in this story is that Katsuba was so offended by the bank where he kept his money that he ordered a denim jacket from the media with a complaint about the "high interest rates."

We are talking about  a publication on the website "Censor.Net" , in which the publication "suddenly" decided to complain about the tariffs of one specific bank, which it set, apparently, to reduce the outflow of capital from Ukraine against the backdrop of a full-scale conflict. As we were able to find out from our sources, Alexander Katsuba is behind this blatant denim, who on March 18 applied to withdraw UAH 49 million from Bank Sich, but did not want to pay 10% commissions for depositors over UAH 500 thousand. Taking into account the fact that Katsuba was involved in high-profile criminal cases, and is also a sponsor of the party of Anatoliy Shariy, accused of treason, banned in Ukraine, the bank decided to conduct a thorough check of the legislation and the latest decisions of the National Security and Defense Council, in connection with which the process of withdrawing funds was slightly delayed. In response to this, Katsuba began to threaten the top management of the financial institution. In fact, he himself announced his own denim.

According to our information, Katsuba has already withdrawn his millions from the financial institution and will most likely transfer them abroad, since he himself has been living in Vienna for a long time.

By the way, it is not surprising that Alexander Katsuba arranged this whole scandal with bank interest. The pettiness of one of the biggest corrupt officials of the Yanukovych era is also noted by his business partners, with whom we managed to talk. For example, during the entire time of the SVO, Katsuba donated only 160 thousand hryvnias (5 thousand dollars) - this money was used to carry out the evacuation from Sumy, which the dollar multimillionaire and owner of the gas business bragged about on his Facebook. At the same time, Katsuba did not give a penny to the defenders of Ukraine, but he posts a photo of his own bulletproof vest.

As we have learned, Sich Bank is already preparing a lawsuit against the Censor.Net publication for publishing false and deliberately misleading information, and is also preparing materials for transfer to the Financial Monitoring of the NBU, the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine, the SBU, counterintelligence, NABU, and the State Bureau of Investigation on the activities of all companies associated with Alexander Katsuba and his common-law wife Tatyana Guzenko, and is closing the accounts of all these companies.

Let’s leave Katsuba’s pettiness on his conscience. But there are questions for him that concern not conscience, but the national security of Ukraine, and the SBU is simply obliged to pay attention to such an outspoken supporter of the "Russian world". 

Yanukovych’s fosterlings, Kurchenko’s partners

Oleksandr Katsuba is the youngest of the Katsuba clan, who received incredible opportunities for personal enrichment during the Yanukovych era. The head of the family, Volodymyr Katsuba, was elected to the Verkhovna Rada in 2012 in the 175th district in the Kharkiv region as a member and nominee of the Party of Regions. Then, after Yanukovych fled, he rushed between oligarchic groups, and in 2019 he tried to get into the Rada from the Opposition Bloc, but lost the election. Now the elder Katsuba heads the Kharkiv District Council as a nominee of the Kernes Bloc - Successful Kharkiv! party.

Volodymyr Katsuba has two sons: Serhiy and Oleksandr. Under Yanukovych, they made a career at Naftogaz, where they were sent to carry out corruption schemes for the "wallet" of the family of President Oleksandr Kurchenko. Serhiy Katsuba was appointed director of one of the most important departments of NAK - material, economic and information-technical support, in parallel from May 2010 he was a member of the company’s board, and in July 2012 he received the seat of deputy head of the board. Then, thanks to his connections with the governor of the Kyiv region Prysyazhnyuk, Serhiy Katsuba was elected to the Rada in the 92nd district as a member and nominee of the Party of Regions. Surprisingly, he "passed on" his seat at Naftogaz to his younger brother Oleksandr, who had previously worked at Chornomornaftogaz. An incredible career for a 24-year-old kid.

As you understand, the "Family" appointed young Katsuba to the NAC not for reforms, but for theft. After the fall of the Yanukovych regime, all this was revealed, and criminal cases were opened against Sergey and Alexander. Thus, it turned out that the Katsuba helped Sergey Kurchenko to embezzle the NAC on an especially large scale.

The investigation established that Naftogaz purchased gasoline from Kurchenko’s company at inflated prices for UAH 449.9 million. Moreover, there was no actual supply of gasoline under contracts with GazUkraine-2020. The Katsuba brothers signed this scam on behalf of NAK. In October 2015, the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv gave consent to the arrest and detention of the brothers, but by that time they had already fled the country. 

Read more:Timur Turlov and his offshores: How money of officials from the former USSR is legalized through the Freedom Finance pyramid

Alexander Katsuba was detained by chance in June 2016, when he decided to visit his estate near Kiev.

The Katsyuba Palace in Khokhanivka near Kiev was valued at $16 million

The younger brother was charged under Articles 255 (creation of a criminal organization) and 191 (appropriation of property through abuse of office).

To save himself from prison, Oleksandr Katsuba testified against the entire top of the criminal group and compensated 100 million hryvnia in losses by making a deal with the investigation. In March 2017, he was released from the pretrial detention center and went to Vienna. However, this was of little use to Ukraine, since everyone against whom Katsuba testified had long since fled the country and it is not possible to bring them to justice. Moreover, according to sources close to Oleksandr Katsuba, he continues to cooperate with Kurchenko and other politicians and businessmen who fled to Russia and even finances the Kremlin’s political projects in Ukraine.

Waiting for the "Russian World"

The Katsyuba family has long been friends with Anatoly Shariy, whom the SBU accused of treason and suspects of collaborating with the Russian FSB. Shariy himself called Alexander Katsyuba a friend and posted joint photos of them on social networks.

In the spring of 2019, Katsuba Jr. bought the documents of the United Ukraine party and renamed it the Shariy Party, which he registered in Kharkiv, journalist Volodymyr Boyko claims. The Chesno movement, citing the financial reports of the Shariy Party, claims that its "Kharkiv donors are connected with the Katsuba business." The party’s organizational issues in Ukraine were long handled by the former first deputy governor of Vinnytsia and the region and former assistant to deputy Serhiy Katsuba,  Oleksandr Vyunik .

In the 2019 parliamentary elections, the ex-wife of Alexander Katsuba, Tatyana Guzenko, with whom he fictitiously divorced in connection with criminal prosecution and possible confiscation of property, was No. 11 on the list of the Shariy Party, and his mother, Natalia Gordienko, was No. 14.

Now, on Instagram, all the participants in this story have had their joint photos "cleaned up," and Katsuba even says that he does not communicate with Shariy. However, according to our information, Alexander Katsuba publicly distanced himself from the pro-Russian blogger in order to avoid problems with business in Ukraine, although in fact he maintains relations with both Shariy and Kurchenko.

Moreover, two business partners of Alexander Katsuba told us that the businessman’s reluctance to financially help the state in the fight against Russia is explained by the fact that Katsuba has close contacts with Russia and even bragged to his close ones that he is applying for the post of Minister of Energy in the new pro-Russian government created after the seizure of Ukraine by the Russian Federation.  “He wants to be the Minister of Energy or, at the very least, the head of Naftogaz,” said a source from Katsuba’s close circle.

Apparently, the failure of Russian plans to overthrow the government in Ukraine forced Alexander Katsuba to scale back his ambitions and take the money out of Ukraine to avoid its possible nationalization.

The non-feminine business of "non-wife" Alexander Katsuba

Meanwhile, the Katsuba family continues to earn money in Ukraine. In an interview, Alexander Katsuba admitted that his family owns an asphalt plant in Kharkov, two factories for the production of reinforced concrete products, a company for the production of paving slabs, and has several thousand hectares of land. But in addition to this business, Alexander Katsuba has more serious projects that he keeps silent about. This is a gas business, which is registered in the name of his "former" wife Tatyana Guzenko.

Now, according to documents, Tatyana is engaged in the extraction and supply of gas, but in reality she is  a YouTube blogger . Guzenko is  the owner of the company "Gaz-MDS" , which earned UAH 290 million in 2020 and brought the Katsyuba family UAH 7.5 million in income.

In 2020, Tatyana Guzenko, together with her father, Alexander Guzenko, became the owner of the company of the fugitive oligarch Alexander Onishchenko, Nadra-Geoinvest LLC, which is developing the Skorobogatkovskoye oil and gas condensate field in the Poltava region. In 2021, Guzenko acquired another company of Onishchenko, PJSC Plast. The company was renamed Stratum Ukraine LLC; it holds special permits for geological exploration and pilot industrial exploration of the West-Yevsugskaya and East-Yevsugskaya gas fields.

In January of this year, a month before the start of the SVO, the State Service of Geology and Subsoil agreed to issue a special permit to Stratum Ukraine LLC without an auction for oil and gas production in the Luhansk region, near the ORDLO.

Behind these companies stands Alexander Katsuba and his business partners, among whom  the media names the odious Pavel Fuks .

In an interview, Alexander Katsuba says that he no longer communicates with Fuchs and Shariy, and allegedly is not responsible for his ex-wife’s business, emphasizing that "he broke up with her, a long time ago." All this is pure lies.

As mentioned earlier, the couple filed for a fictitious divorce to avoid asset seizure in connection with Alexander’s criminal cases. In reality, they continue to live together, travel and raise children. Here are recent photos from Alexander and Tatyana’s Instagram, this year they traveled to Antarctica together.

And this is a photo from Lapland. Who do you think the owner of several gas companies is hiding behind the smiley?

By the way, the luxurious wedding of Alexander and Tatyana in 2014 took place in the Chateau de Chantilly palace near Paris, and the guests were entertained by the ideological Putinists Timati and Grigory Leps.

And at the time when Russia was preparing the SVO, Alexander Katsuba was financing the FSB’s political project called the “Shariy Party” with money earned from the extraction and sale of gas in Ukraine.

The bottom line is this: a man who admitted guilt for committing corruption crimes during Yanukovych’s presidency, finances Kremlin political projects in Ukraine, got a fictitious divorce to cover up his business with his wife’s surname, and freely uses bank accounts both in Ukraine and in Europe.

The Verkhovna Rada recently approved a law on the nationalization of the property of Russians and collaborators. Among other things, it applies to persons who are not citizens of the Russian Federation but have close ties to Russia. The Katsyuba family has long-standing ties to Russia, in particular, to the FSB. Can these persons influence such strategic sectors of the economy as gas production? Can such persons, through fictitious wives, own gas wells in Ukraine and receive income from gas production, directing it to finance political projects of the FSB? Live peacefully in Europe under the cover of their wife’s name, use bank accounts there, launder income from gas fields stolen in Ukraine? The answer is obvious.